Obsessed
by KTCastle
Summary: Castle was obsessed with finding the answers. Someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to hide where he had been and what he'd been doing… and now, more than ever, he was determined to solve this mystery.


Obsessed.

It wasn't until he'd made the smart remark about kisses speeding up his recovery that Castle had realized that something was seriously wrong. Well, more wrong than it already was; lying in a hospital bed without any idea on how he'd traveled there wasn't exactly right.

"I guess I put a little - kink - in our wedding plans."

"Yeah, is that supposed to be a joke?"

Kate was most definitely not laughing. She hadn't looked more serious since that day at the swing set when she thought he was breaking up with her. The day he had proposed.

"What do you mean?"

Castle felt confused, everything was a bit surreal, like he was watching his life unfold as an outsider. His head was pounding, his throat parched, and things really weren't making a whole lot of sense.

"I mean… tell me what happened."

He didn't understand, and, searching into the depths of his mind for some clarity wasn't working. Didn't she know about the accident? Didn't emergency services, or whoever found him, give her the details? Perhaps she'd rushed straight to the hospital, as soon as she'd heard. Maybe she didn't know that someone had _deliberately_ run him off the road.

Castle tried to explain, as much as he could. An SUV had bumped his Mercedes off the road, had rammed it from behind, but Kate looked disbelievingly at him, demanding more. He wasn't quite sure what she is asking for; he'd been in a car accident and had arrived at the hospital unconscious, and yet she was talking about stolen boats and being lost at sea.

"You've been missing for _two months_."

And there it was - hitting him like a sledge hammer, a blow to his temple. The silence was deafening and his headache became almost unbearable. He had lost two months of his life and he had absolutely no idea how or why.

When he thought back, he could tell almost right away that something had been up. He'd thought it was just the worry, imagining how his family would have reacted when they'd received the call informing them of the car accident. He'd started to recognize the subtle differences though, the more he studied her. He couldn't read her face, couldn't see into her soul like he had been able to these past few years. He'd been missing for two months and now feared that Kate had started to shut herself off, had lost hope, had lost faith in _them._

Castle stared out of the hospital window without seeing the view, trying in vain to make sense of what Kate had told him. He could hear muffled voices out in the corridor, suspected his mother was grilling the doctors about his prognosis and trying to work out why he couldn't remember two months of his life. He wasn't sure if Kate was out there too. She'd left quickly, understandably frustrated at his lack of answers, his lack of explanation as to why he'd left her on their wedding day.

Did she even believe him? Believe that he was _really_ suffering from memory loss? He couldn't dwell on the thought that she might believe instead that he'd deliberately left her, had wanted a break from the life they were building together and was lying to her about what had happened, where he had been. He bundled that notion into a neat little box in the farthest corner of his mind; if he worried about it too much, it would make him feel more desolate than he already did.

Considering the fact that he really shouldn't be surprised that Beckett appeared to have started rebuilding her walls, it still hurt. Her coping mechanism had always been to shut herself away, an effort to keep her heart safe and protect herself from further damage. He couldn't begin to imagine how she'd coped with his disappearance. It tugged at his heartstrings that she might have believed she had lost him, and it combined with the unimaginable horror of what he'd put his family through.

He couldn't help that he felt guilty, that he needed to apologize although he really didn't understand why. All he had was that when he'd woken up and gazed into the depth of her beautiful eyes, he'd seen pain. And he was responsible for putting it there. He saw how hurt she was and the guilt gnawed at his heart, causing his chest to tighten. Somehow he had done this to her and he just wished he knew why, could work out how to fix it. He wanted things to slot neatly back together, to be normal, but he couldn't quite figure out how to go about making it happen. Quick to start rebuilding those walls, Castle recognized that Kate had predictably and understandably moved into self preservation mode, her basic instincts had gotten the better of her when the niggling doubts she'd obviously had, had taken hold.

Better that, he supposed, than returning from wherever he had been to find her broken, falling apart. At least she was still functioning and had survived the past two months, however damaged she may be. He felt unbelievably grateful that he now had a chance to start chipping away at those walls again, the opportunity to stop her building them any higher. They had been through so much together; locked in a freezer, a bank holdup, disarming a nuclear bomb, even _standing_ on a bomb. He believed that his Kate would come back to him, that they could regain the closeness they had found. At the end of the day, he hadn't spent all those years worshipping Kate Beckett to leave her at the altar, and deep down she must believe that.

Castle understood Kate so much better now, knew precisely the way her walls were constructed, how strong they would become. He was confident that he would manage to get around them but his impatience was tangible, he missed her terribly. Even though she was right outside the room, she was absent; distant and out of reach. He had to tread carefully, go gently and handle her with care. And it was going to take some time.

When Kate had told him that the team from the Twelfth had found the place he'd been staying, had inexplicably spent the last two months of his life in, he saw a glimmer of hope. He clutched at the lead with both hands. It was all he had, and he pinned all of that hope onto the campsite being the key that would unlock the door to this mystery.

"I want to go there, maybe it will help me remember".

Kate had looked dubious, seemed unsure about dragging him up to Massachusetts and what would it achieve. And, yes he was still suffering the effects of exposure and dehydration. He couldn't _not_ go, though, had insisted, proclaiming that he needed to see the campsite for himself. It was crucial, he argued, and thankfully, Kate had relented, agreeing that it might help for him to see it in person. He also wondered fleetingly if she wanted to see how he would react once at the campsite. If she needed help deciding whether he was lying, but that was another thing too painful to consider, regardless of how unbelievable the truth was.

As they walked up the track towards the clearing - where Kate had told him the tent had been pitched - Castle could almost imagine that things were back to normal. With the sun shining on his back, the fresh fragrance of the salty sea and clean air all around him, he closed his eyes and imagined away the inexplicable predicament he'd found himself in. Abruptly, he was brought back to reality when Kate announced that they were almost at the campsite.

The tent itself had been packed away, although Castle could still make out the crumpled grass and flattened square patch of earth where it had been. It looked as though it was an uncomfortably small tent, not the grandiose affair he would have been pitching, if indeed he _had _felt inclined to go on a camping adventure. He almost chuckled out loud at the thought of himself going camping, but was smart enough to keep the thought to himself; being with Kate Beckett had taught him a lot about when it was appropriate to keep his mouth shut.

As soon as he started to analyze the situation, Kate turned on him. Castle immediately recognized how hard she'd been working to keep it together; it was scary how quickly her control had begun to slip once she'd let down her guard. He tried to explain why he couldn't have camped there but Kate practically accused him of fabricating his novel attempt _'Tropical Storm'_.

Of course, he had never spoken to Kate about his failures… the novels he'd started but had tossed out like trash before he'd finished their first drafts. Those novels reminded him how precarious his position was, how an author could be on the best seller lists one minute and the unemployment line the next.

Castle patiently explained, admitting that the plot line had been terrible. He continued when she pointed out accusingly that his house in the Hamptons wasn't exactly tsunami proof; he marveled at how much he had learned about how to work with Beckett, how to handle her ever so gently when she was in such a precarious and delicate position. How to chip away at her walls when she was obviously upset and in emotional turmoil.

He understood Beckett's needs now; she needed answers and tangible proof, needed him to be strong and objective, needed to be able to put their relationship aside until they could make sense of what had happened. He was determined to sort through the mess and to make her see that leaving her was the last thing he would ever, _ever _do.

As they poked around the campsite, Kate finally reached the end of her tether. She confronted him and lost the last vestiges of grip on her anger. He'd felt it immediately. The electricity in the air as her emotions had bubbled and festered just beneath the surface. He noticed, painfully, how hard she worked, making a conscious effort not to let them get the better of her. If she needed to be angry at him for them to be able to move forward, then of course he would take it. Whatever wrath she needed to deal out, he would accept it. He understood all too well that being angry would give her some relief from the grief and uncertainty she'd been facing, giving her something to channel her energy into rather than falling apart. He remembered so very clearly the anger he had felt when he'd thought he'd lost her, when she'd chosen to pursue Maddox rather than accept his pleading not to, his confessions of love. He knew that her seams were pulled tight, fraying at the edges; she was doing all she could to hold herself together and for that, he was so very proud of her.

As she made her accusations so fiercely, Castle knew that she looked so much braver than she really was. And he was thankful that she was still so strong, had coped so remarkably well without him. He understood now how Kate operates; he knew that if she ensured that she thought the worst of him, it would help soften the blow if her fears were found to be correct. It would hurt less if it turned out that he really _had _been trying to run away from their life together; Kate was protecting herself. She didn't wear her heart on her sleeve like he did, but he could see how deeply she was hurting, despite her attempts to hide behind her mask. If he couldn't get to the bottom of this mess, find all the answers before it was too late, Castle concluded that he may in fact be in very real danger of losing Kate forever.

Searching the campsite frantically for clues, he was exhausted, slowly bowing under the enormity of his situation. He tried to remain positive, to be strong, but the situation was looking more and more hopeless as he uncovered no vital information. It really did appear that he had been camping out there by that lone little jetty before taking a trip back to reality in that tiny sky blue dinghy.

Frustrated, tired and getting nowhere, he heard Kate say something. There had been a witness. A witness? The cogs in his head started to turn furiously… finally, a thought to start teasing out. A witness could tell them more about what had happened, what they'd seen, what Castle had spent his time doing out there in that isolated little hideaway for weeks on his own. He was eager to go and meet this Henry Jenkins and get some answers.

Castle approached the motor home precisely one step behind Beckett. He was desperate to get information and his skin felt like it was crawling with the anticipation. Barely able to contain himself as she lifted her knuckles to knock on the door, he wanted to rip it off its hinges and drag Jenkins out, force him to let them in on the secret that had been Castle's life for the past two months.

Kate paused as the door opened, her body freezing in front of him and when she asked for Henry Jenkins by name, the man in front of them introduced_ himself_ as Henry Jenkins… But then Kate was saying that she'd met with a _different_ Henry Jenkins? This was not the man she was expecting. _Huh_. What was going on? The affable and easy going man before them was indeed Henry Jenkins, but he was not the man that Beckett, Espo and Ryan had interviewed.

For the first time since he had woken up in the hospital bed believing he'd been in a car accident on the way to his wedding, not realizing that over two months had passed since _that_ day, Castle sensed a small victory.

He was now unwaveringly certain that there had been some sort of a cover up. This was the breadcrumb of a clue that they'd needed to start unraveling the mess. With his mind feeling clearer and more optimistic than it had been since he'd woken up, Castle could sense Beckett's walls starting to weaken. He couldn't see her face, probably wouldn't have been able to read her expression anyway, but he could perceive a change in her posture as she relaxed ever so slightly. She then stood tall, more confident than he'd seen her since they'd reached the campsite and she seemingly had a new resolve to get to the bottom of this mystery.

Castle recognized the moment that it registered with Kate that she had been duped - the man she'd interviewed earlier, the man who had fed the team the whole story about seeing Castle camping down near the jetty, 'fake' Henry Jenkins, had been lying.

It was beginning to appear that Castle had been correct; the whole thing had been one giant, intricate, hideous and unexplainable fabrication. Where _had_ he been? Kate wasn't at fault here, he was. Castle struggled to understand why this had happened at this point in their relationship. What exactly had he become involved in? Who _was_ this fake Henry Jenkins? He was now obsessed with finding the answers.

Someone was going to an awful lot of trouble to hide where he had been and what he'd been doing… and now, more than ever, Castle was determined to solve this mystery.

His future – _their future_ - depended on it.

_The End._

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_Thank you so much for reading, and thank you to those of you who take the time to review. Without reviews, it's so much harder to learn from each story and improve._

_Thank you especially to my amazing Betas who provide endless assistance and encouragement despite their hectic schedules – you know who you are._


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